21 January 2013

Early Voting - by Secy of the State Merrill

ICYMI: As printed in the Hartford Courant

We had a very smooth Election
Day on Nov. 6, which was a mini-miracle since our state suffered
serious damage and power outages as a result of Storm Sandy
just a week before the election. I am grateful to our registrars of
voters and town clerks who worked tirelessly under challenging
conditions — for the second year in a row — to make sure our state's
more than 2 million active, registered voters could get to polls and
cast ballots.

Lines were long as Hartford
voters waited [to] cast their ballots at Hartford city hall on Nov. 6.
(Reuters / January 18, 2013)

We had a very healthy voter turnout of 74 percent of registered
voters last November — that means nearly 1.6 million Connecticut voters
cast ballots on Election Day. But we can and must do better.

The one consistent complaint we heard was that lines at the polls
were just too long — in some cases it took up to an hour or 90 minutes
of waiting in line to cast a ballot. Although these wait times were too
long, they were not nearly as long as the waits of four to five hours
that were being reported in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio
and Colorado.

In some cases, towns cut the
number of polling places significantly, which can represent substantial
municipal cost savings. But with a high-turnout election, fewer polling
places meant much larger crowds of voters per precinct — especially
between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Election Day.

My takeaway from our last election: If long lines are the problem,
then our lawmakers can and should take one simple step in the current
legislative session toward modernizing our elections — pass a
constitutional amendment, proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and me, that would open the door — finally — to early voting in Connecticut.In Florida, more than 8 million citizens voted in the 2012 election,
with a full 30 percent casting their ballots before Election Day. Ohio
saw similar percentages. In fact, nationwide it is estimated that more
than 32 million American voters cast their ballots early before Election
Day — nearly 25 percent of the entire electorate. More than 30 states
allow citizens to cast ballots early through regional early voting
centers or no-excuse absentee ballots that voters can obtain without
having to state a reason. All over this country, it seems, in red and
blue states, voters have the opportunity to vote early — but not in
Connecticut.

Here in the Land of Steady Habits, we still have language written
into our constitution that requires citizens to vote in their polling
place on Election Day, except for specific situations when one may
obtain an absentee ballot — illness, physical disability or injury,
status as a poll worker, active duty military service, absence from the
voting district on Election Day, or religious tenets forbidding secular
activity on Election Day.

This language is archaic, overly restrictive, and does not even
permit our lawmakers to adjust our election laws and make them more
progressive as the majority of states have done. And this outdated
language also contributes to Election Day bottlenecks that can frustrate
voters just trying to cast a ballot. It is long past time for a change.

We need change for another reason. In 2011 and 2012, we saw major
storms just before Election Day. Severe weather made many roads
impassable, and people could not get to their polling places. They were
stuck in their homes or displaced into shelters. But because they were
not out of town, they were not legally entitled to use an absentee
ballot, and faced the choice of real hardship in order to cast a ballot,
or being forced to sit out an election and therefore be disenfranchised
from their right to vote. First responders, National Guard personnel
and utility workers faced similar hurdles.

This is wrong. Connecticut needs to catch up to the rest of the
states where elections accommodate voters' busy, hectic and
unpredictable lives by either opening up multiple days of voting before
Election Day, or making our absentee ballots more flexible for voters to
use — or both.